Two British aid workers have been captured by Russian forces in Ukraine, a humanitarian organisation said.
Presidium Network said Paul Urey and Dylan Healy were detained on Monday at a checkpoint south of the city of Zaporizhzhia.
The Foreign Office was urgently seeking more information. Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan told Sky News it was “doing all it can to support and identify these two people.”
Presidium Network, a UK-based NGO, said the pair were part of a humanitarian operation in Ukraine to help provide food and medical supplies and evacuation support, adding they were not working for the organisation.
They were helping a woman and two children evacuate to a town southwest of Zaporizhizhia when they were stopped and accused of being British spies. Presidium Network said they last had contact with Mr Urey around 4am on Monday.
A statement from Linda Urey, mother of Paul, said he was a Type 1 diabetic who needs insulin treatment. The family are “extremely worried”, Ms Urey said.
Mr Urey, 45 is understood to be a family man with two children from northwest England. He took up humanitarian aid work after failing to qualify for the army and spent eight years working in Afghanistan.
Mr Healy, 22, from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was a kitchen manager at a UK hotel chain before heading to Ukraine. The pair were said to be friends.
Dominik Byrne, founder of Presidium Network, told the PA news agency he was appealing on behalf of the captured men.
He said: “Basically what needs done is two things – we need to put pressure on the government to take this case seriously, and try, through their networks to verify this, but also to kind of help us find these people.
“But also because I know diplomatic channels are completely broken down, we use these tactics to find people by having it very public and putting pressure publicly on Russia to determine that they have got these two people and that they’re safe and well.
“And we want to tell tell the Russians basically that these aren’t spies. These aren’t military people. These are just humanitarian workers who got caught in a bad situation.”
Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) said on Wednesday that Russian forces were abducting people in Zaporizhzhia and other parts of Ukraine for likely use in future prisoner exchanges.
This “filtration” campaign targets men of military age, former military and law enforcement personnel, and pro-Ukrainian activists for interrogation, torture, and possible execution, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
The GUR also said Russian forces were sending Ukrainian hostages to Crimea to “replenish the exchange fund” and speculated they may be preparing to use the captives in 9 May Victory Day celebrations, as they did in Donetsk in 2014.
The capture of the aid workers came to light the day after the first report that a British person had been killed fighting in Ukraine.
Scott Sibley, a British army veteran, was identified as the dead man. A second UK national was reported missing.
It is thought the pair were fighting against invading Russian forces as volunteers supporting Ukraine’s army, though this was not confirmed.
A small number of British troops are known to have travelled to Ukraine since Russia invaded. Last week, two British fighters were paraded on Russian state TV after being captured in Mariupol.
The UK has formally told all citizens not to travel to Ukraine and declined to send troops to support the war effort. The government is instead supplying Ukraine with weapons and financial aid, in line with western allies.
The Ministry of Defence announced on Friday that around 8,000 British troops will be sent this summer to take part in exercises across eastern Europe with allies from Nato and the UK Joint Expeditionary Force alliance, which includes Finland and Sweden.
Dozens of British tanks will join the troops in countries from Finland to North Macedonia in the largest deployment in Europe since the Cold War.
